1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to improved power operated shears that are useful for industrial cutting applications. In particular, the improved shears of the present invention are suitable for use in the food processing industry to cut and trim meat, and especially to cut poultry.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Hand held manually operated conventional scissors have been used for cutting and trimming meat and other food products. Conventional scissors also have been used in a variety of other industries for cutting sheet material, such as cloth, textiles or thin metals. It was necessary for an operator of the conventional scissors to use a relatively large cutting effort and often the operator's wrist was at an unnatural orientation. Repetitive use at such orientation and large cutting effort could cause injury to the operator's wrist. To reduce the effort needed to operate such conventional scissors, power operated shears have been devised.
Most known power operated shears have various shortcomings. For example, most such shears do not have a similar physical arrangement to conventional scissors and the blade movement cannot be controlled to the same extent and in the same way as conventional manually powered shears.
Powered cutters for the pruning of plants have been devised that operate similar to manually powered pruning cutters. However, the structures of the powered cutters do not lend themselves to a conventional manually powered scissor type of arrangement which is typically used for cutting meat, poultry, cardboard, heavy cloth and the like, and the powered movement of the blades is not controlled in a manner ideal for scissors having relatively long blades. In such manually powered shears, a thumb ring and a finger loop extend in a direction traverse to the extent of a pair of relatively straight cutting blades. Also, many powered cutters provide a "snap action" cut, in which operation of a trigger causes a blade to close against or across another blade. The speed of closing or the extent of closing, or both, are not controllable by the operator once the closing action begins. Thus, a need exists for power operated or power assisted cutting shears that are arranged, operated and controlled in a manner similar to that of conventional manually-operated scissors.